Martial Law Baby

Like many others born between the years 1972 to 1986, I am what they call a Martial Law Baby. I do not really know what that means except, perhaps, that my generation is nearing middle age.

It is just a tag, a means of identifying the generation I belong to. It does not hold any meaning other than to differentiate my generation from, say, Generation X.

When Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law in September 21, 1972, he ushered in one of the darkest chapters of Philippine history. Curiously, courtesy perhaps of my relatively sheltered provincial middle class upbringing, I have no traumatic recollection of the Martial Law years. But I do remember feeling Marcos’ omnipresence in my childhood.

I remember studying the origins of the Filipino in history books and such and seeing a likeness of Marcos as Makisig, the mythical first Filipino, and Imelda Marcos as Maganda, the first Filipina. I remember the earliest books on reading and writing always featured Pepe and Pilar and of course Bantay, the loyal mongrel. It was always Pepe this, Pilar that and “run, Bantay, run.”

I remember having to line up for nutribun. In the school that I went to it was not given for free. I remember having to buy my ration of the so called nutrient-filled, rock-hard bun for twenty five centavos. It was brownish and sweet and sometimes you’d find little insects mixed with the flour but once you dunked it in Lem-o-Lime it was not so bad.

I remember we were all agog with Voltes Five, Daimos, Mazinger-Z. Like kids of today, we were crazy over video games. There were no Play Station nor X Box back in the day so you’d have to go to Ororama in Cogon where the video machines were and line up for tokens. That or if you were a little older you’d go straight to the section where they sell Lord Wally, swipe a little into your palm, style your hair and then wait for the girls from Lourdes.

Marcos eventually outlawed video games as it was becoming too popular among school children. We felt this a terrible injustice then. We could never understand how playing speed racer could corrupt our minds.

I was in grade five when Ninoy was shot in the Manila International Airport. The assassination apparently triggered mass protests in Manila. There were only two channels on TV then, Channel 9 and Channel 12. The late Harry Gasser was the guy who read the news for Channel 9 but I do not remember watching all the bad news from Manila. The news was of course sanitized by the censors but as far as we were concerned the murder of Ninoy never upstaged our interest in the space adventures of Buck Rogers or of the Starship Enterprise.

Maybe our generation got tagged with the wrong label. We were born during Martial Law but the tag always sounded a little wrong, as wrong as a jar of sandwich spread labeled as peanut butter. None of us ever marched in the First Quarter Storm, nor in the many other marches and public demonstrations against Marcos. None of us ever died fighting the dictatorship, none of us even knew something was terribly wrong with the country. At best we were post Martial Law, the generation that marched post-Marcos, if at all.

But there is no getting away. People, when seeing our birthdates, will always conclude,”Ah so you’re a Martial Law baby.” And that’s just it—we were still babies during Martial Law, dead to the affairs of the world, carefree and preoccupied only with the silly games of children.

And always, at least on my part, there is that nagging feeling that our generation missed it’s turn manning the front. Our grandfathers fought the great war, our fathers and brothers fought Marcos. As for us, there is that silly little voice at the back of our heads that says we really have fought no one.

We are Martial Law babies. Perhaps now is our time to finally start fighting for causes greater than ourselves.